Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of Leaderless Resistance

By George Michael

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik detonated a car bomb in downtown Oslo, Norway. He didn't stop there, traveling several hours from the city to ambush a youth camp while the rest of Norway was distracted by his earlier attack. That's where the facts end. But what motivated him? Did he have help staging the attacks? The evidence suggests a startling truth: that this was the work of one man, pursuing a mission he was convinced was just.


If Breivik did indeed act alone, he wouldn't be the first. Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City based essentially on his own motivations. Eric Robert Rudolph embarked on a campaign of terror over several years, including the Centennial Park bombing at the 1996 Olympics. Ted Kaczynski was revealed to be the Unabomber that same year. And these are only the most notable examples. As George Michael demonstrates in Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of Leaderless Resistance, they are not isolated cases. Rather, they represent the new way warfare will be conducted in the twenty-first century.


Lone Wolf Terror investigates the motivations of numerous political and ideological elements, such as right-wing individuals, ecoextremists, foreign jihadists, and even quasi-governmental entities. In all these cases, those carrying out destructive acts operate as "lone wolves" and small cells, with little or no connection to formal organizations. Ultimately, Michael suggests that leaderless resistance has become the most common tactical approach of political terrorists in the West and elsewhere.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
• Release date: Sep 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9780826518576

George Michael

George Michael is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Westfield State University. He is author of The Enemy of My Enemy and Willis Carto and the American Far Right.

Book preview

Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of Leaderless Resistance

Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of Leaderless Resistance

George Michael

Vanderbilt University Press       Nashville

© 2012 by Vanderbilt University Press

Nashville, Tennessee 37235

All rights reserved

First printing 2012

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

LC control number 2011046021

LC classification HV6431.M483 2012

Dewey class number 363.325—dc23

ISBN 978-0-8265-1855-2 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-8265-1857-6 (e-book)

For Wolfgang Vladimir

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 The Evolution of Warfare, Conflict, and Strategy

2 Leaderless Resistance and the Extreme Right

3 Ecoextremism and the Radical Animal Liberation Movement

4 The Strategic Implications of the New World Order

5 The Wiki Revolution and the New People Power

6 Weapons of Mass Destruction and Leaderless Resistance

7 The Global Islamic Resistance Movement

Conclusion: Fifth-Generation Warfare and Leaderless Resistance

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Several people assisted me in this study. I would like to thank all those who granted me interviews for this book, including Thomas P. M. Barnett, Harold Covington, Alan Dershowitz, Francis Fukuyama, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Rohan Gunaratna, Michael V. Hayden, Christopher Hewitt, the late Frederick Iklé, Anthony Joes, Edward Luttwak, Darren Mulloy, the late William L. Pierce, Paul Pillar, Daniel Pipes, John Robb, Martin van Creveld, and Laird Wilcox. Christopher Hewitt and Darren Mulloy offered suggestions on the manuscript that were very helpful.

I would also like to thank the staff at Vanderbilt University Press. I extend my special thanks to Eli Bortz for having confidence in this project. I greatly appreciate the editorial efforts of Ed Huddleston. Finally, I thank the University of Virginia’s College at Wise and the Air Force Counterproliferation Center for allowing me time to complete this book.

Introduction

The face of terrorism is undergoing considerable change. There is a noticeable trend indicating the increasing frequency of lone wolf attacks by individuals and small cells with little or no connections to formal organizations. In the past few years, numerous lone wolf incidents carried out by assorted radicals have gained headlines. For instance, in April 2009, Richard A. Poplawski, a man who expressed racist views on extremist websites, fired on police in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, killing three officers.¹ Just a few weeks after that, an antiabortion activist, Scott Roeder, murdered a physician who performed late-term abortions.² In June of that year, a little-known but long-standing right-wing extremist, James von Brunn, opened fire at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., killing a guard.³ In November, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a Virginia-born Muslim psychiatrist in the US Army, allegedly went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, that killed thirteen people and left thirty-eight wounded.⁴

More incidents followed in 2010. On February 18, Joseph Stack, a fifty-three-year-old software engineer and tax protester, slammed his private plane into a building in Austin, Texas, that housed offices of the IRS, triggering a massive fireball that set the edifice ablaze and killed Stack and an IRS manager.⁵ And on May 1, Faisal Shahzad, a seemingly upright and assimilated computer technician, a US citizen who lived in Connecticut but was born in Pakistan, attempted to detonate three bombs in an SUV parked in the heart of Times Square in New York City. Although he reportedly made contact with the Pakistani Taliban during a trip to Pakistan in 2008, after his arrest Shahzad insisted that he had acted entirely alone while in the United States.⁶

Lone wolf terrorism is not confined to the United States, as was tragically displayed on July 22, 2011, when a bomb placed in a Volkswagen exploded in Oslo, Norway, near the offices of the prime minister and other government buildings. The blast killed eight people and seriously injured eleven others. Less than two hours later, a lone gunman disguised as a police officer struck a summer camp operated by the youth organization of the liberal Norwegian Labour Party on the island of Utøya in Tyrifjorden. The second attack left sixty-eight people dead, many of them teenagers. The admitted perpetrator of both attacks, Anders Behring Breivik, had previously expressed anti-Muslim and anti-immigration sentiments on a website. In an online manifesto, Breivik counseled fellow travelers to emulate his terrorism by acting alone on their own initiative.⁷ Ominously, his style of lone wolf terrorism suggests a high degree of planning and calculation, which could portend greater lethality of such attacks in the future. Breivik maintained no affiliations with hardcore extremists, though he was once briefly affiliated with a youth organization associated with the Far Right group Norwegian Progress, and he was not on the authorities’ radar screen. Having no criminal record other than minor offenses, he was able to procure firearms and fertilizer for making his bomb without raising red flags. His attacks came out of nowhere.⁸

The increased frequency of these lone wolf attacks indicates a shift from terrorism by organized groups to terrorism by unaffiliated individuals.⁹ To meet the challenge of seemingly random attacks such as these, in the summer of 2009 US authorities announced an effort to detect lone wolves who might be contemplating politically charged violence. Dubbed the Lone Wolf Initiative, it began shortly after the inauguration of President Barack Obama and was launched in part because of a perceived rise in hate speech and increasing gun sales.¹⁰ As reported, the Lone Wolf Initiative is one aspect of a broader strategy to combat domestic terrorism dubbed Operation Vigilant Eagle.¹¹ As early as 1998, the FBI publicly announced that fringe groups could be planning attacks on their own initiative, as in the case of Eric Robert Rudolph, who supposedly drifted in and out of white supremacist groups before embarking on his one-man campaign of violence, which included bombing abortion clinics, a gay bar, and the Centennial Park at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta.

For obvious reasons, since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11), the US government has been focused mainly on well-established terrorist groups, such as al Qaeda. However, recent lone wolf attacks suggest that leaderless resistance is becoming the most common form of terrorism in the United States and elsewhere in the West. In essence, leaderless resistance involves a kind of lone wolf operation in which an individual or a very small, cohesive group engages in terrorism independent of any official movement, leader, or support network.¹² To be effective, leaderless resistance assumes that many individuals and groups hold a common ideology and are willing to act on shared views in a violent or confrontational manner.

Despite these episodes of sporadic violence, some observers dismiss leaderless resistance as primarily a nuisance that poses no substantial or existential threat to the nation, something that could be consigned to the field of abnormal psychology. Others, however, believe there is a leaderless resistance trend that should be taken seriously, if for no other reason than the harm lone wolves can inflict. A case in point is the Beltway snipers. As a result of their violent escapades in the fall of 2002, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were charged with, or suspected in, twenty-one shootings in Alabama, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington State. All totaled, they were believed to have killed ten persons and wounded three others in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area alone. Although their campaign does not appear to have been ideologically driven, it could nevertheless serve as a model for an individual or group with a political agenda.¹³

In the current climate of fear in the United States, leaderless resistance has the potential to seriously disrupt the normal functioning of daily life. Jihadists operating in the United States would not have to resort to spectacular attacks in the style of 9/11 to be effective. Rather, any kind of seemingly random assassinations and bombings could be psychologically devastating to the public.¹⁴ Furthermore, the most notorious lone wolves in the United States—Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, and Bruce Ivins (the alleged sender of anthrax-laced letters)—wreaked havoc cheaply.¹⁵ Inasmuch as lone wolves operate alone, they are likely more difficult to monitor because they lack ties to organizations that could already be under surveillance. As the case of Ted Kaczynski—the Unabomber—demonstrated, a highly intelligent and motivated person working alone can carry on a campaign of violence over the course of many years.

Increasingly, individuals and small groups are responsible for some of the most lethal acts of terrorism. Well-established organizations, such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and al Qaeda, continue to mount operations. But individuals and much smaller cells, sometimes inspired by the same ideologies as more established groups, can autonomously act without central direction. In the contemporary world, the likelihood of major armed conflicts between nations has greatly diminished. Moreover, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has entered a unipolar era in which a sole superpower, the United States, dominates. Sometimes referred to as the new world order, this development has drastically changed the security environment within which terrorists operate. Fewer parts of the world than before are conducive to harboring large, clandestine groups, since many foreign governments are coordinating their counterterrorism efforts with the United States, as they seek to dismantle terrorist organizations and deny them funding and resources. This trend accelerated after 9/11.¹⁶ Furthermore, with the collapse of the Soviet system, state sponsorship of terrorism has drastically declined.¹⁷ Finally, new surveillance technology has enabled governments to better monitor dissident groups and potential terrorists. Large groups cannot operate as effectively as in the past because this monitoring makes them more vulnerable to infiltration and disruption.

On the other hand, the emergence of new technology has the potential to serve as a force multiplier for leaderless oppositional movements. In his book Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, Howard Rheingold explained how ordinary people could harness new technologies to attain political and social goals. For example, smart mobs in Manila in 2001 overthrew President Joseph Ejercito Estrada in organized demonstrations coordinated by using cell phones to forward text messages. Similarly, cell phones, along with Internet-based platforms that permit the unregulated flow of information, were used to confront repressive governments during the Arab Spring revolts in 2011.¹⁸ As far back as November 1999, antiglobalization activists have used mobile phones, websites, laptops, and handheld computers as part of their swarming tactics to halt meetings of the World Trade Organization.¹⁹ Ominously, in recent years flash mobs, organized through social media and telecommunications, have emerged in scattered US urban areas and have often turned violent.²⁰

The Internet allows like-minded activists to operate on their own initiative without the direction of a formal organization, hence the emergence of leaderless resistance as a new operational strategy and the miniaturization of terrorist and insurgent movements around the world. As the political scientist and journalist Fareed Zakaria observed, the new face of terror consists of local groups across the world connected by a global ideology. Today we are witnessing the age of the super-empowered individual who, if adequately armed with a weapon of mass destruction (WMD), could effectively declare war on the world.²¹ These developments mark a major departure from previous paradigms of warfare and conflict.

As John Robb presaged in his book Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, the rise of small-scale, do-it-yourself terrorism could become more worrisome than the centrally planned attacks about which the United States has been most concerned.²² The US Department of State has observed a trend whereby more dispersed, localized, and smaller-scale groups are increasingly active in terrorism, often with great lethal effect.²³ This trend concerns authorities since all that connects the various individuals and cells is a common ideology, making them difficult to detect and deter. Supposedly, lone wolves are far less likely to leave paper trails and do not have superiors or contacts who can be monitored. A shared narrative and doctrine enable networks of such individuals to maintain a sense of cohesion and purpose without physical interaction.²⁴

Could leaderless resistance presage a new paradigm of warfare? Chapter 1 surveys the evolution of contemporary conflict and strategy. In 1989 William Lind and others identified four generations of warfare.²⁵ First-generation warfare, which reached its zenith in the Napoleonic Wars in the early nineteenth century, was characterized by conflicts in which adversaries sought to amass huge armies that confronted each other on the battlefield in the hope of winning a single decisive victory. Second-generation warfare, which brought new technology and firepower to bear—for example, the machine gun and heavy artillery—nullified the power of mass formation of troops and resulted in stalemates and trench warfare. Such tactics exemplified combat in World War I. Third-generation warfare came to fruition during World War II, when improvements in armor, airpower, and communications allowed for highly maneuverable combat operations on an unprecedented scale. Firepower from both air and land forces could thus be synchronized against an enemy. This allowed a numerically inferior army to prevail over a larger army with greater resources, as evidenced by the Wehrmacht’s stunning defeat of the French army in the blitzkrieg of May 1940. Virtually all forms of asymmetrical warfare are outgrowths of insurgent or guerrilla warfare. So-called fourth-generation warfare is a euphemism for the guerrilla movements that emerged in the twentieth century to challenge the European colonial powers, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Mao Zedong’s peasant-based guerrilla strategy is widely considered to be a paradigm of fourth-generation warfare. Mao’s main innovation was to add an ideological component to the guerrilla war framework, in which a single-party doctrine instilled a sense of revolutionary fervor in insurgents who were led by a unified command structure. Once the insurgency mobilized the peasant population and established a critical mass, it could launch large-scale attacks and ultimately overthrow the government. The emergence of new technology and more fluid forms of affiliation could usher in a fifth generation of warfare.

The Far Right subculture in the United States has led the way in theorizing on the concept of leaderless resistance, which is the topic of Chapter 2. In 1983 Louis Beam, a long-standing activist, first published the seminal essay Leaderless Resistance, in which he proposed that the traditional hierarchical organizational structure was untenable under contemporary conditions. This work was disseminated through computer networks, which Beam was a pioneer in exploiting during the 1980s. Within the Far Right movement, there is an ongoing debate over the appropriateness of terrorism. Some activists believe in the efficacy of leaderless resistance, while others believe such an approach is doomed to failure. Although essentially a tactic of desperation, leaderless resistance has occasionally proved to be highly destructive, as evidenced by the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

Among the most adept at implementing the leaderless resistance approach have been the radical environmentalist and animal liberation movements, and they are the focus of Chapter 3. These so-called ecoterrorists have been responsible for a considerable amount of property damage, though not many fatalities. There are indications, however, that some representatives of the movement have adopted a more apocalyptic and misanthropic worldview and could thus be more inclined to wage lethal attacks in the future. Similarly, some radical activists in the animal liberation movement have targeted personnel affiliated with animal testing laboratories and could escalate their campaign of harassment to include deadly attacks.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, the world entered what Charles Krauthammer first characterized as the unipolar era. The emergence of the new world order has drastically changed the security environment, resulting in a less hospitable atmosphere for large terrorist groups. The greater coordination of counterterrorism efforts among nations is discussed in Chapter 4.

With the emergence of new technology, most notably the Internet, activists can operate on their own initiative. The Internet is at the center of the ongoing revolution in communications and networking, and the medium enables new forms of organization and greater dissemination of information. Like-minded people with dissident beliefs, who previously would have had a difficult time finding one another, can now network across national borders. At the 1999 World Trade Organization conference in Seattle, a disparate coalition of antiglobalization activists, labor union members, and assorted left-wing protesters demonstrated how swarming tactics could be employed without central leadership. Enhanced communication capabilities allow for new, more flexible models of organization and mass collaboration. Elements of globalization serve both to hinder and to facilitate insurgent and counterinsurgent efforts. Chapter 5 explores these trends.

One of the most worrisome aspects of the so-called new terrorism is the prospect of small groups, operating without constraints, getting their hands on WMD. New technology and access to WMD could create super-empowered individuals capable of unleashing a significant amount of violence on their own. Chapter 6 explores this danger, as well as the various types of WMD to which terrorists in the future could gain access and the hurdles they would need to surmount to carry out such attacks.

In the aftermath of 9/11, numerous jihadist lone wolves and small cells have attacked targets in the name of al Qaeda, though they often have had little or no formal connection to the organization. Chapter 7 chronicles the development of the contemporary Islamist resistance movement and discusses some of the theaters in which it has been active, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Europe, and the United States. Much of the discussion focuses on Abu Musab al-Suri, whose book The Global Islamic Resistance Call has emerged as the definitive treatise on leaderless jihad among scattered Islamist militants around the world today.

Some observers believe that a fifth generation of warfare is on the horizon, ushered in by the Internet, the pervasiveness of the media, porous borders, and the increasing proliferation and availability of WMD, all of which could enable individuals to cause tremendous damage.²⁶ Conceivably this fifth-generation warfare could take the form of leaderless resistance in which individuals and small cells commit acts of terrorism on their own initiative with no traditional command-and-control hierarchy. The Conclusion discusses pressing contemporary issues, such as globalization, immigration, multiculturalism, and the fragility of states, and how these affect insurgencies. In particular, two contemporaneous but contradictory trends in global politics—integration and fragmentation—are shaping contemporary forms of warfare, conflict, and terrorism. The increasing frequency of the lone wolf tactic suggests that it will feature prominently in conflict in the coming years.

As with variants of conflict and warfare that preceded it, the salience of leaderless resistance comes from a confluence of several political, social, and technological trends. Various factors unique to our age are leading to the miniaturization of terrorism, warfare, and conflict around the world. Though this development may seem insignificant, with the diminishing size of terrorist and insurgent groups suggesting weakness, the potential for destruction and disruption is perhaps greater than ever. New Internet platforms allow faster, more efficient communication for all—including terrorists. Greater interconnectedness also makes infrastructure more vulnerable to disruption as a perturbation could cascade throughout the system. The availability of more-lethal weapons and dual-use technology could lead to deadlier attacks. Finally, the historical process of globalization, although improving life opportunities for many people, can be highly disruptive as it upends relations among citizens, cultures, economies, societies, and governments. An overview of the evolution of warfare, conflict, and strategy will illustrate how the leaderless resistance trend began.

CHAPTER 1

The Evolution of Warfare, Conflict, and Strategy

To place leaderless resistance in context, a discussion of previous generations of warfare and conflict is instructive. To be effective, strategy must evolve to reflect the current operational environment. Throughout history, modes of warfare have been influenced by a number of social, political, economic, and technological factors. Earlier observers of warfare, such as Marquis de Vauban (1633–1707), understood the importance of science and technology and their implications for warfare.¹ Likewise, in his Art of War, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) observed the links between changes in military organization and developments in the social and political spheres. Such trends transformed warfare.²

In a seminal 1989 Marine Corps Gazette article, The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation, William S. Lind and others identified four generations of warfare.³ The advance from one generation of warfare to the next requires changes in various aspects of society, including politics, economics, and technology.⁴ The starting point for Lind’s schema was the era of the Napoleonic Wars in the early nineteenth century, during which first-generation warfare came into being.

First-Generation Warfare

Several developments allowed first-generation warfare to develop. The wealth of nations increased, which meant more resources for war were available. Improvements in agriculture freed up more farmworkers to be used as soldiers. The emergence of nationalism led to the mobilization of entire countries, and patriotism became a potent force that instilled greater enthusiasm in national armies. The increasing power of the state enabled the administration of such an ambitious undertaking. An innovation in communications introduced in 1794—the optical telegraph, or the semaphore—meant that messages could more quickly cross great distances, which let Napoleon keep in touch with Paris when he was in the battlefield.⁵

The Napoleonic Wars were characterized by a near-total mobilization of the resources of France. In 1793 the Committee of Public Safety, led by Robespierre, issued a decree—the levée en masse—which conscripted all human and material resources. In the face of the collapse of the Old Royal Army, the French Assembly made the bold decision to permanently requisition all citizens for national service.⁶ This monumental action transformed the nature of war by involving an entire nation. With the entire economic and human resources of France behind him, Napoleon was able to wage a new style of warfare: total war. Previously war had often been considered the sport of kings, and usually aroused little interest in the majority of the population.⁷

The son of a minor Corsican noble family, Napoleon Bonaparte rose to high command while still in his twenties, because of the French Revolution. As a citizen army replaced the professional army, the morale of the French soldier added a new element that Napoleon fully understood and cultivated. To inspire his army, he effectively united his men around a cause, the principles of the French Revolution, and later the glory of France as a growing empire.⁸

One of Napoleon’s major innovations was the separation of field troops into self-contained divisions.⁹ Napoleon divided his army into corps, which were further subdivided into divisions, brigades, regiments, and battalions that operated as autonomous units, but moved and fought together as a single entity.¹⁰ He combined military leadership with political leadership, thus eliminating friction at the top and attaining a unity of command. An absence of checks and balances in this one-man rule, however, resulted in critical errors that ultimately brought down Napoleon’s empire.¹¹

Tactically, in first-generation war, adversaries sought to amass huge armies that confronted each other on the battlefield, each attempting to win a decisive victory.¹² In battle Napoleon always favored the offensive, with the central objective of annihilating an enemy’s field forces. Everything else was secondary. To that end, he emphasized firepower. France’s industrial and scientific infrastructure allowed the creation of heavy artillery, and Napoleon once opined that God is on the side with the best artillery.¹³ Having little respect for the sensibilities of European royal dynasties, he was not loath to annihilate opposing forces, fully understanding that the currency of politics is power.

Eventually Napoleon’s adversaries adapted to his strategy by avoiding the decisive battles he so eagerly sought. Although his armies operated on a huge scale with unprecedented speed, his desire for hegemony in Europe led him to a strategic overreach that finally brought about his downfall.¹⁴ The British navy’s victory over the French fleet at Trafalgar in 1805 sank Napoleon’s plans for an invasion of England. He imposed a European economic blockade of British goods, but England was able to surmount this challenge.¹⁵ Next, in the Peninsular War, Spanish and Portuguese irregulars harassed the French army, forcing Napoleon to deploy a huge French force that was desperately needed elsewhere. Like the British, the Russians refused to meet Napoleon on his terms and even ceded the capital city of Moscow, thus using the strategic depth of Russian geography to wear his army down, which resulted in the disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. Finally, at Waterloo in 1815, the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon. Although Napoleon did not leave a written compilation of his thoughts on warfare, an adversary, a Prussian officer named Carl von Clausewitz, formulated his own strategy in a volume that became a classic text on the art of war.

Carl von Clausewitz

Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz was born at Burg, near Magdeburg, in 1780. Having entered the army in 1792 as a Fahnenjunker (ensign) when he was only twelve, he had his baptism of fire the next year as part of a coalition of forces in a campaign that drove the French out of the Rhineland. Clausewitz attended the Prussian Military Academy (Kriegsakademie) in Berlin from 1801 to 1804, graduated at the top of his class, and captured the attention of General Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst (1755–1813). An astute officer, Clausewitz went on to serve as aide-de-camp to Prince Augustus of Prussia in the Jena campaign of 1806, during which he was wounded and taken prisoner. Sent to France, he stayed there for the remainder of the war, observing conditions in France that allowed him to see Prussia from a different intellectual and emotional perspective.¹⁶ Upon his return home, he was placed on General Scharnhorst’s staff and worked on reorganizing the Prussian army, which clearly needed reform, having been swiftly defeated by Napoleon’s forces. Clausewitz attributed the army’s 1806 defeat to Prussia’s adherence to outmoded methods of warfare. Its opponent had been emancipated from such limitations.¹⁷

Appalled in 1812 by King Frederick William III’s decision to join Napoleon in the fight against Russia, Clausewitz, along with several other Prussian officers, joined the so-called German Legion, a unit that fought alongside the Russian army. In 1815 he reentered the Prussian army, and in 1817 he assumed the directorship of the Kriegsakademie.¹⁸ During his tenure there, Clausewitz attained the rank of general and produced his most important work, On War.¹⁹ In 1831 he was appointed chief of staff to the Prussian army, deployed to observe the Polish rebellion against Russia, and he died after contracting cholera that same year.²⁰

Edited by his widow, On War was published posthumously in 1832.21 In it Clausewitz defines war as an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will and asserts that war is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.²² He viewed war as a legitimate instrument of national policy when waged for rational reasons. For Clausewitz, war was a serious means to a serious end and should thus be always subject to political design and oversight by the state.²³

Seeing war as an instrument of policy, Clausewitz believed its ultimate prosecution should be carried out by political leaders, not the military.²⁴ The effective statesman, he believed, encompassed the gamut of power relations, political and military.²⁵ He also thought that soldiers should be allowed, even encouraged, to participate substantially in planning and conducting operations.²⁶ To be clear, Clausewitz made an important distinction between tactics—the art of winning battles—and strategy—the use of battles to obtain the objectives of a campaign.²⁷

Military institutions, Clausewitz posited, depend on the economic, social, and political institutions of their respective states.²⁸ The Clausewitzian trinity, as it came to be known, consisted of interlinked citizens, army, and government. An important lesson he learned from observing Napoleon’s campaign was that an entire nation should be mobilized in the service of a military objective. Prior to Napoleon, European monarchs feared that an armed citizenry could be destabilizing. Although Clausewitz was essentially conservative in outlook and aware of the potential danger of a mass army, he still favored this arrangement because he saw a strong, monolithic military and total mobilization of its power as necessary to exert the national will. Believing that the revolutionary fervor of the French armies had accounted for many of their victories, Clausewitz embodied this and other principles in a theory of warfare.²⁹

Like Napoleon, Clausewitz emphasized the significance of the decisive battle. Rather than focusing on territory, he believed it was more important to destroy an opponent’s military power. Thus an effective strategy concentrated forces at a decisive position. The culminating point was the moment when the chief objective of the campaign was accomplished.³⁰

Clausewitz’s model accounted for many intangible factors as well. He believed that a theory of war must consider the human element, including leadership, morale, perseverance, faith, zeal, courage, and boldness. And discipline was essential: he cited obedience as the most important factor in war.³¹ To Clausewitz, when genius was combined properly with the emotional component of intuition, a commander in chief could attain preeminence on the battlefield.³²

Clausewitz recognized that war had a high degree of uncertainty, or friction. Like the great Chinese war strategist Sun Tzu, Clausewitz knew the importance of surprise. As he explained, the stratagem implied a concealed intention.³³ Although he conceded that troop deployment, surprise, and other tactics could affect the course of battles, he counseled that trying to achieve victory by such means was fanciful, especially the higher the level at which a war was waged, as between large armies, and the greater the number of people involved.³⁴ Experience, Clausewitz counseled, was one factor that could help an army overcome friction.³⁵

Clausewitz effectively built on the fundamental concepts of eighteenth-century warfare and constructed much of the conceptual edifice that dominated the nineteenth century.³⁶ The Prussian army’s victories of 1866 and 1870–1871 ensured that his thought would have a great influence on German foreign policy for years to come.³⁷ In his paradigm, the statesman appears as a supergeneral who possesses the final authority over his generals in the same way that the generals possess authority over lower-ranking officers and enlisted men.³⁸ This concept came into great force during World War II, when Germany’s chancellor, Adolf Hitler, assumed control over all the country’s military decisions. In American military academies, Clausewitz has attained preeminent status and On War is treated as a quasi-sacred text.³⁹ But his twentieth-century influence, according to some of his detractors, contributed to the calamity of World War I, during which second-generation warfare came to fruition.⁴⁰

Second-Generation Warfare

Several innovations made second-generation warfare possible. The increasing wealth generated by industrialization, concomitant with the sheer volume of industrial output, provided the wherewithal to raise, support, and transport huge armies. After the Napoleonic Wars, the power of the state continued to increase in Europe. Better systems of public administration enabled governments to improve tax collection and raise the money for ambitious undertakings. New technology was brought to bear too. Steam power revolutionized transportation and logistics, making it much more efficient to transport personnel and materiel: armies and supplies could be moved by steamship and railroad. The telegraph, developed by Samuel Morse, allowed for rapid communications and made possible the greater coordination of forces. The new system allowed the micromanagement of wars from capitals, heralding centralized command and control. With enhanced communications, commanders could now organize huge troop movements at critical points on the battlefield, and the operational, or theater, level of war was born.⁴¹ As nations became more interconnected by technological developments, they became ripe for world wars.⁴²

Much had changed at the doctrinal level as well. The Napoleonic Wars served as a catalyst for Prussian military reforms, and other European armies were quick to follow. Perhaps the most important innovation was the creation of the German general staff, which became the brain of the army.⁴³ The chief of staff was expected not only to implement his commander’s orders, but also to serve as a full partner in command decisions.⁴⁴ Furthermore, a new war academy, the Preußische Kriegsakademie, was created to train officers. After the reforms, the new Prussian army was much more flexible and responsive than its predecessor.⁴⁵

An important innovation was the doctrine of Auftragstaktic (mission-oriented command), a new German philosophy of warfare emphasizing speed and the need to take the offensive. Officers were encouraged to respond to circumstances of the moment and take advantage of them. The key was an overall mind-set that allowed a unit to be built around a particular goal.⁴⁶ General Helmuth von Moltke (1800–1891) expanded on Napoleon’s decentralized command structure, in which senior commanders were given considerable authority, but followed the general direction of his military doctrine. Moltke’s version encompassed every element of war from mobilization to battle, enhanced by meticulous central planning by the general staff. So decentralization of execution was combined with a centralized direction of purpose.⁴⁷ With these reforms, the German army was a flexible, cohesive war machine that was the envy of the world.⁴⁸

Prior to World War I, war had consisted primarily of the employment of force against force. However, this epic conflict—the so-called Great War—turned into a vast exercise in the coordination of national resources, including factories, labor, and raw materials.⁴⁹ French military planners believed that heavy artillery and a large standing army would assure victory.⁵⁰ But the tactic of amassing huge columns of soldiers on the battlefield, standard during the Napoleonic Wars, proved unfeasible during World War I. Troops had formerly congregated for protection, but increased firepower and greater accuracy demanded that armies disperse.⁵¹ As a consequence, stalemate ensued and resulted in trench warfare. Thus second-generation warfare favored defense over offense, and machine guns, magazine-fed rifles, rapid-fire artillery, and barbed wire were developed or put to use.

Patriotism became increasingly important and brought together millions of men under arms whose enthusiasm was sustained despite the horrific battlefield casualties in World War I.⁵² Militarism suffused the zeitgeist, as writers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Sorel, Charles Péguy, and Gabriele D’Annunzio extolled elementary, even nonpolitical, bloodshed as a way to cleanse the world, which they saw as drowning in materialism and feminism.⁵³ Arguably, politics played little part in World War I. As war hysteria swept over Europe, people entered into the conflagration largely for the sake of fighting. Political restraints were overwhelmed, and politicians who resisted the tide were execrated.⁵⁴

Between the two sides, over sixty-five million men were fielded—42,188,800 by the Allies and 22,850,000 by the Central Powers. Fifteen million people lost their lives in the war: more than 8.5 million soldiers and approximately 6.5 million civilians.⁵⁵ Air warfare notwithstanding, World War I did not involve much in the way of new military techniques. Rather it demonstrated the war-making value of massive industrial output. Ultimately Germany was defeated in a war of attrition because of the superior manpower and resources of its adversaries. Despite its desperate situation, Germany persisted and incurred a staggering loss: more than two million of its citizens dead (nearly 3 percent of its population). This high cost left an abiding sense of grievance on which Hitler was able to capitalize.⁵⁶

Third-Generation Warfare

According to some interwar critics, World War I discredited the Clausewitzian—and by extension German—model of warfare. Chief among them was Basil Liddell Hart (1895–1970). At the start of World War I in August 1914, Liddell Hart joined the British army. After receiving a commission as a second lieutenant, he served with distinction in combat tours in France, during which he was wounded in a gas attack at the Battle of the Somme in July 1916. After leaving the army, he established a reputation as Britain’s foremost military journalist, and later as a prominent military historian. The principal lesson he learned from the Great War was that it was folly to send mass formations of armed men in frontal assaults to face machine-gun garrisons. He reasoned that such tactics nullified Clausewitz’s dictum of concentrating forces in a decisive point of attack. Direct attacks against an enemy’s front should be avoided, Liddell Hart thought, believing that such an outdated practice would necessarily end in failure.⁵⁷ Such tactics, he argued, had led to the trench warfare in World War I in which so many soldiers had been killed. To prevent such a quagmire in subsequent wars, Liddell Hart advocated a form of maneuver warfare that would be based on the deployment of tanks, mobile infantry units, artillery, and aircraft against an adversary’s headquarters and communications system. Rather than amassing forces in concentrated form, they should be deployed in an intelligent, strategic way to maximize their effectiveness.⁵⁸

As was the case with second-generation warfare, the German general staff was in the forefront in the development